What happens at VMEU when the lights go out
all over Vinton
- Generation crew contacts Alliant Energy to see if they
have an estimated time before our transmission service is restored.
- If Alliant's outage time estimate is more than 20
minutes, generation crew starts a small generator to get station power on in
the generation plant.
- Generation crew checks the station logs to have an
estimate of how much electrical load the city had at the time of the outage.
- Generation crew starts the appropriate generator or
generators to pick up the city load and lets them start to warm up.
- Generation crew contacts line crew to make sure all
personnel are safe and accounted for before commencing the restoration of
power. This can delay considerably the amount of time before power can be
restored but in the interest of personnel safety, it has to be done.
- Generation crew begins restoring power to circuits
around town, starting with the hospital circuit followed by the Lutheran Home
circuit. VMEU has a total of 16 circuits.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Outage
information
Unscheduled city wide power outage at approximately 7:50
AM on July 5th, 2007. By 8 AM our generation crews had started restoring power
to all of our circuits feeding Vinton. Generation crew ran our generators until
4:35 PM when they were finally able to turn the town back over to Alliant. This
outage was caused by the failure of a lightning arrestor on Alliant's
transmission line. In addition, they also found a bad insulator on their
transmission line. We suspect that the insulator tracking over has been the
cause of our untimely blinks from Alliant Energy and now hopefully things will
become more stable again. On this same day, contractors working on 21st street
managed to arc our 12,470 line to one of their large backhoes causing another
blink on our system. It was very fortunate that the backhoe operator and one of
his co-workers on the ground received no injuries when the arc occurred. This
could have been a fatal mistake for one or both of these men. The wire that the
arc came from suffered some damage, breaking about 5 strands of the 26 strand
cable. The VMEU line crew applied a temporary repair sleeve to the damaged wire
until a more permanent solution could be done.
Unscheduled city wide power outage at approximately 6:34
PM on 6/21/2007 due to stormy weather and loss of Alliant system voltage. Power
was restored by the plant generating by 6:50 PM. At around 8 PM our plant crew
tried to go back on Alliant but their system voltages were too low and a couple
of circuits were dropped but immediately picked back up on our generation. At
around 11 PM Alliant was stable and voltages were good so the crew returned us
back to Alliant system feed. At 3:30 AM on 6/22/2007 another storm passing
through knocked the Alliant system out again and by 4 AM our crew had once again
started local generation and restored the town. At shortly before 7 AM Alliant
reported its system as normal and stable but the generation crew looked at the
radar and decided to continue to feed Vinton until the storms had passed. By
8:20 AM the crews had returned our system back to Alliant Energy.
Unscheduled city wide power
outage at around 11:50 AM on
6/1/2007. Vinton went dark
when the 34,500 volt transmission line serving the city went dead. The outage
occurred during a mild thunderstorm. It is unknown at this time as to what
caused the Alliant outage.
VMEU apologizes for any inconvenience to our
customers.
Unscheduled city wide power
outage at around 11:30 AM on
5/14/2007. Vinton went dark
when the 34,500 volt transmission line serving the city went dead. According
to sources at Alliant, a Department of Transportation roadway light over by
Urbana fell into Alliant's 34,500 volt transmission line triggering the
operation of breakers to protect the system. Alliant was able isolate the
affected area and reroute our system supply voltage in a few minutes.
VMEU apologizes for any inconvenience to our
customers.
Unscheduled outage at 9:30 AM on
4/17/2007.
Vinton
lost power when a water pump on the
generator carrying the town failed
plunging the city into darkness.
Fortunately the generator has a
backup water pump that could be
utilized to get the power back up in
about 20 minutes. VMEU was
generating to allow the line crew to
replace some parts on a 34,500 volt
switch in our substation as a
maintenance procedure.
VMEU apologizes for any inconvenience to our
customers.
Unscheduled outage at 4 PM on February 24, 2007. Vinton
lost power when ice build up on Alliant's transmission line toppled it to the
ground. Generation crew had the city back on in about 20 minutes and power from
Alliant didn't return until February 25, 2007 at around 8 PM.
VMEU apologizes for any inconvenience to our
customers.
On May 9th, 2006 at around 2:31 AM Vinton residents were once again without power.
Alliant has failed to provide VMEU with the cause of the early morning outage.
That information will be posted here when I receive it.
VMEU apologizes for any inconvenience to our
customers.
On April 21st, 2006 at 3 AM Vinton was plunged into darkness due to a failure of
an underground cable at a East Central Iowa REC substation located south of
Vinton. Yes, you read it correctly. According to sources the fault occurred
close to the actual substation transformer and a failure of their substation
breaker to operate caused an Alliant substation breaker to operate plunging
Vinton and surrounding areas into darkness. At approximately 3:23 AM our
generation plant took Vinton out of its darkness. As the cause of the problem
was investigated our power from Alliant was intermittent and our generation crew
continued to operate keeping the lights on steady. Shortly after 7 AM our
generation crew was notified by Alliant that they thought everything was stable
and so our crew tied our system back into Alliant's grid and shut down the
generators. At approximately 8:06 AM the power went off again but only remained
off for about 5 minutes. The crew did not restart the generators since the
outage time was so short. Thanks to the generation crew for a job well done. It
is nothing short of miraculous that our generation crew can be sound asleep and
get to the plant and be up and running within 20 to 25 minutes after our system
tie to Alliant is down.
VMEU apologizes for any inconvenience to our
customers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Service restoration to Vinton Municipal Electric Utility
(VMEU) customers in the event of natural or man made disasters shall be based on
the following criteria:
Health, Welfare and Safety of our customers.
Repairing three phase primary circuits that will gain the most customers first,
beginning with the 12.47 KV loop around town.
Restoring single phase primary lines with large amounts of customers followed by
the lines with lesser customers.
Restoring individual customer service drops that are easily accessible for fast
repair.
Restoring individual customer service drops that are in hard to get to locations
thereby hampering our restoration efforts.
